No. VII. How pure the joy when first my hands unroll'd, The eye skims restless, like the roving bee, RESUMING our account of the Aston family, we have now to bring forward the youngest surviving daughter of Sir Walter, CONSTANTIA ASTON, who became the wife of Walter Fowler, Esq. of St. Thomas Priory, near Stafford. She was the constant correspondent of her brother Herbert during his residence in Spain, appears to have been strongly attached to him, and did all in her power to bring to a successful issue his addresses to Catharine Thimelby, whom she professes in one of her * 'These lines, but with considerable alteration, are taken from Dr. Ferriar's Bibliomania. letters to value infinitely, and to love even above her own life. She had imbibed the family taste for poetry and elegant literature, and was, as several passages from her letters quoted by Mr. Clifford, sufficiently shew, a very warm admirer of her brother's verses, and very solicitous to form a perfect collection of them. One of these extracts paints her solicitude on the subject with so much naiveté and simplicity, and imparts so amiable an idea of her character and feeling, that I feel myself under the "I have not pleasing necessity of inserting it. receaved yet," she tells her brother Herbert, in a letter to him dated 1636, "those three copyes of verses you promised me for sending your box to Mr. Henry Thimelby, therfore I beseech you not to forget them, for I have a longe time much longed for them. And indeed I could almost find in my hart to quarrel with you, and to conclude my letter with it; for I have written to you I know not how often, and beged of you most pittyfully that you would send mee some verses of your owne makeing, and yet you never would, when you know I love them more then can bee expressed. And in one of your letters, rather than you would send any of them to poore me, you writte word you had none, when I am sure you cannot chuse but thinke I know that is impossiable. And therfore pray see how hardly you deale with mee, when I have sent you all the verses that I could gett perpetuly, never omicting the sending of any that I could get that were good ones. Therefore I desire you will make an end of the quarrell, with sending mee some as sune as you can; for I assure you they can not come to one that will more esteme them then your ever most affectionat sister to serve you, Constance F.” * That a lady thus partial to the Muses, should be beloved by them in return, was a result that might naturally be expected; and we are pleased therefore to find in the "Tixhall Poetry" a most beautiful tribute to her personal charms. It was discovered by Mr. Clifford, on a scrap of paper, the back of which was inscribed, "These for Mrs. Constance Aston, at the Lady Marchiones of Clanricard's, dowager, Red Lion Square," and must have been written, he observes," at * Tixhall Poetry, Preface, p. xxi. least as early as 1634; for about that time, or sooner, Constance Aston changed her name, and became Mrs. Fowler." To Mrs. Constance Aston. As in the summer a soft falling shower Tempereth Sol's beams, and cooles the parched earth, Refresheth every field, to every flower, More sweetness yields, and gives to new ones birth: So in this cloud of griefe your beauty weares, Your eyes but warme whom they were wont to burne, Your lovely face thus gently dew'd with teares, For every drop doth a fresh charme returne. And as this sorrow doth your beauty raise, We must not forget to mention likewise, that Walter, third Lord Aston, and grandson of Sir Walter, by his marriage, about the year 1680, with Catherine Gage, daughter of Sir Thomas Gage of Firle, in Suffolk, introduced into the family a lady as much attached to the Muses as was Constance Fowler, and who had more than twenty years before formed a collection of verses which now appears as the third division of the "Tixhall Poetry." To this singular and interesting group of poetical and kindred friends, it is necessary lastly to add the name of EDWARD THIMELBY, the second brother of Sir John Thimelby of Irnham, an ecclesiastic of great worth and piety, and who died provost of the collegiate church of St. Gery, in Cambray, about the year 1690. He was a man also of considerable erudition and taste; in his youth he possessed a large fund of vivacity and wit; and he appears, from his share in the Tixhall collection, to have entered into the family poetical compact with infinite spirit and play of imagination. It is to the persons whom I have now enumerated that we are indebted for the Collection entitled "Tixhall Poetry," a series of effusions of which part is original, and part selected from preceding and contemporary writers. In which |